National Parks

Petrified Forest/Painted Desert, Arizona 2022

 Grand Canyon, Arizona

Meteor Crater, Arizona.  Not a national park but close to Grand Canyon. 2022

Bryce Canyon, Utah 2022

Zion, Utah 2022

Monument Valley, Arizona/Utah.  Also not a national park but close to a lot of them. 2022

Theodore Roosevelt, Medora, North Dakota 2023

Glacier, Montana 2023

Grand Teton, Wyoming 2023

Yellowstone, Wyoming 2023 (was very hard to choose just one picture!)

Badlands, South Dakota 2024

Devil's Tower National Monument, Wyoming 2024

Shenandoah, Virginia 2024

Some of our Travels, in No Particular Order

Thousand Islands, New York 2022

Casey, Illinois, home of the World's Biggest Things 2022

Biloxi Beach, Mississippi 2021

Hammond Castle, Gloucester, MA 2022

Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, Louisiana 2021 (New Orleans in distance)

Daisy Airgun Museum and World's Largest Airgun, Rogers, Arkansas 2021

This one is in my top ten best things ever:  The old courthouse museum in Monroeville, Alabama.  This is the town that inspired To Kill a Mockingbird.  An exact replica was built on the set in CA.  I went to Harper Lee's grave, explored the town and it was Christmas time so it was extra magical. 2021

University of Notre Dame Campus, South Bend, Indiana (touchdown Jesus) 2023

Yellowstone Bear World, Rexburg, Idaho 2023

Mt. Rushmore, Keystone, South Dakota 2024

Chimney Rock, Bayard, Nebraska 2024

PEZ Visitor Center & Museum, Orange, Connecticut 2024

Hello? Anyone still there? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Sooooo yeah it's been awhile since I posted.  So much has happened over the past 5 years! If you are one of my Facebook friends, you've seen the vast quantities of road trips we've been on and the thousands of pics I've posted.  The last time posted was before The Mandalorian came out and I've been utterly besotted with Baby Yoda/Grogu since then.  He's just the cutest little green jelly bean ever.  

From 2018-2021 we were visting the grandkids about 2-3 times a year, but then we had a huge falling out w/ my stepson (which I still maintain was NOT our fault but the story is too long to go into) so we haven't seen the boys since.  That plunged me into a deep depression and anxiety for a long time.  I was still in touch w/ the mother of the kids who told us we could still visit, but my stepson didn't want to be present so she could meet us at a playground or something.  I'm sorry but it's a long way to go and a lot of money to only see them for an hour at a time.  It was just too painful so I ended up blocking her.  I feel bad that the boys are collateral damage.  I was still sending gifts on bdays and holidays but I had to make a clean break for my own mental health.  If the boys want to look us up when they are older, we will give them a chance and we WILL tell them EXACTLY what happened, since I am sure we are the bad guys in the parents' and paternal grandmother's narratives.  

In the meantime, my other 2 stepkids started pulling away from us too and we've been ghosted.  Last time we saw my youngest stepson was Dec of 2021 when we ran into him and he told us that he'd moved back from Arkansas (we'd visited him in June of 2021 in AR), and he'd come see us on Christmas Day.  That was the last we heard from or saw him.  He's back w/ a girlfriend we despised....and told him so when we were in AR....so I suspect that's why he's avoided us.  As for my stepdaughter, she moved north of Boston and stopped reaching out.  I was always the one initiating contact and would get monosyllabic replies from her.  The last straw came on Russell's 60th birthday in 2022 when NONE of his kids wished him a happy bday.  I waited till 10pm and sent terse messages to both her and her younger brother that they disgusted me the way they treat their father.  She blocked me the next day.  I know damn well that their mother is encouraging this rift.  We last saw her after the disasterous OH trip, and she was going to work with us on the situation.  Next thing we know, she's cut off contact w/ us as well.  I was nothing but kind to that woman for EIGHT YEARS.  I thought all that bad blood blood was behind them.  I gave her the benefit of the doubt, I would ask him not to say bad stuff about her in front of the kids, I ALWAYS gave her a flash drive of pics of the boys from our trips since she couldn't go as often as we did (pics of just them, not us), always got pics processed and would frame them for her.  So all of them can just fuck right off.  

Our lives have actually gotten peaceful and less complicated w/o their nonstop drama and constant requests for handouts.  It's enabled us to travel whenever we want and wherever we want w/o having to build in time to go to Ohio.  I just hope they realize that what they've done is permanent.  I can forgive them b/c they are a product of parental alienation by their POS mother, but I will never forget.  I will never trust them again, be friends with them, or help them.  Even if they reach out to apologize.  They've proved themselves to be the most selfish, backstabbing, ungrateful, disloyal users.  

In other news, my mom passed away in Oct 2019 which finally set me free of her verbal, mental and emotional abuse.  I couldn't even muster up a single tear at her funeral.  And I tried too....I was thinking about all the sad scenes from Harry Potter that make me cry, the music from To Kill a Mockingbird, and nothing worked.  

My mother in law lived with us in the coop (cottage) from the summer of 2019 till March of 2022 and she was a delight.  The mom I never had.  I loved having her here.  You always here of conflicts w/ married couples when an inlaw moves in but we never had that dynamic at all.  In fact, I used to constantly reassure her we weren't going to kick her out and we were trying to keep her here so PLEASE tell me if she wasn't feeling well or needed something.  She was so used to everyone putting her needs last that she just couldn't get it in her head that we were putting her needs first.  But she got a bad UTI and my sisters in law used that as the opportunity to throw her in a nursing home, since they were her powers of attorney.  We visited her 2-3 times a week, faithfully.  She passed away this past March and we both miss her so much.  It was hard to get into the habit of not going to see her.  I caught myself numerous times about to say, 'Wanna go visit Ma today?'  

After the kids kicked us to the curb, we started discussing relocating to another state.  We hate Mass, we hate Cape Cod and Sandwich.  I never wanted to spend my life here....and certainly not in my childhood home.  The house is old and it's just too much to deal with anymore.  4 buildings on the property that all date to the early 1900s.  And the yard is too big to mow and take care of.  We are now the proud owners of 10 acres in Michigan, about 20 miles west of Lake Huron.  We closed on the property in August.  The plan is to sell this house and build out there.  This coming winter my plan is to start boxing up nonessential things.  In a perfect world we would be moving a year from now.  We've already met with a modular home company and have some floor plans to look over and work on.  

The best thing of all is how much I've knocked off my Bucket List the past few years!!!  I've now been to all lower 48 states....Russell has 46 (missing OR and CA).  We've done Rte 66 once and planning to go again next year since I'm turning 60 this month. I'm calling it '60 on 66' and this time we'll push into California.  We've been to the Canadian Maritimes twice, and Niagara Falls.  Years ago I'd made some Bucket List Pinterest Boards and they have been so whittled down that there's hardly anything on them anymore.  Everything's been moved over to my 'Bucket List: DONE' pinboard and it has over 500 things on it.  One more cross country trip on Rte 66 and back and one more trip to Maine and all that'll be left are the things in the Pacific NW that I didn't see when I lived there.  And let's face it, the PNW is a lot closer to Michigan than Cape Cod is.  

I will try to update more.  To be honest when my cousin Barbara passed away in 2017, I kinda lost my spark to blog cause she was my most avid reader as she didn't have Facebook.